The Most Beautiful Woman on Earth.

She was once the most beautiful woman on Earth, if there can be such a grossly simple categorization.

If you were a teen guy in the middle 1970s, you had her poster hanging in your room. She was the American ideal. She was fresh, athletic, tanned, and you dreamed of her just-washed hair lying on your pillow next to you.

She had the most stunning smile, the most electrifying eyes, and a sweet, vulnerable naturalness. She was the essence of a herbal Aryan, a Texas beauty who danced across our television stage and then slowly descended into the human tragic zone of Tabloidland. Her public life was then so often dramatized by drugs, drinking, and cruel abuse by men and the media. Cancer stalked and sickened her.

Aaron Spelling had made her star, but she propelled herself into a trajectory of show business legend. She had talent, she could act, and she possessed that essential quality of stardom: the ability to mesmerize millions.

The frantic, famous, money and fame hungry world looked upon her with envy. She had it all for one brief moment in time. An angel of grace and feminine fortune.